A proven game plan for raising sons by the founder of Big Oak Ranch

I’ve been traveling overseas the past few weeks, and my reading options have been few and far between. I can across a small stack of parenting books in English though, and I decided to try this one out, mainly because my own son is 12 years old and meaty discussions on Manhood are on the horizon.

This book obviously comes from a sporting perspective, and as such, it may not appeal to everyone. I personally had never heard of the author, Alabama football All-American, John Croyle, or his athlete kids, Reagan and Brodie, even though Brodie Croyle played several years as quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs! But this is definitely a family driven to success in everything they do (despite failures and disappointments), so that’s the kind of book this is—motivational and focused on parenting success.

John Croyle’s Big Oak Ranch is a home for abused and neglected children, a safe place where children are loved by loving men and taught the values of hard work and integrity, all from a Christian perspective. It’s apparently the lessons that Croyle taught his own kids and formalized to teach the ranch children that make up the focus of this book.

In short, the “two-minute drill” is the concept that those final 2 years your son has at home, from ages 16-18, are your final opportunity to make sure he leaves your home a responsible, respectable man. Croyle writes early on: “By the time they are sixteen, your job is 85 to 90 percent finished. The moment they get a driver’s license, everything changes. Your role shifts to fine-tuning.” (14) Time is short, but as long as our sons are still under our roofs, it’s not too late to teach them some important life lessons that will serve them well in adulthood, things like respect, a determination never to compromise, time and money management, and a good work ethic. Virtually everything a child must learn, they learn by watching their parents, so Croyle’s encouragement is less about what the parents say in teaching their sons and more about how they live. Croyle also writes often and respectfully in this book to the single parent whose role is doubly hard, especially when raising a child of the opposite gender.

Croyle’s format in this book is admittedly cheesy but follows what he calls a “God-given” acronym, M-A-N-H-O-O-D, which stands for the following chapter headings:

M – Master
A – Ask and Listen
N – Never Compromise
H – Handle Your Business
O – One Purpose
O – One Body
D – Don’t Ever, Ever, Ever Give Up

He teaches concepts in these chapters that he deems essential for a boy to become a responsible man, but also qualities that are important for girls to pursue and to seek in a future husband. It’s less programmatic than Raising Knights and Princesses in a Dark Age by Robert Foster, but it contains plenty of nuggets of wisdom for the confused parent. It also reminds me a bit of Wild at Heart by John Eldridge and is just as “theological.”

Some of the nuggets of wisdom that I highlighted include the following:

About relating to your kids: A parent is not the child’s best friend, not their buddy, not their servant, not their enabler, not their defender at all costs, and not a liar or excuser on their behalf. A parent is not a protector against the other parent. (10)

About spending time with your kids: Charles Francis Adams Jr. was a member of the prominent Adams family that produced two American presidents. As a little boy, he wrote in his journal on a particular date that his dad took him fishing and referred to it as a wonderful day, certainly one not wasted. His father, on that same date, entered that he went fishing with his son and referred to it as a wasted day. Parenting is a matter of perspective… let’s not repeat the mistake made by Adams’s father. (15)

About listening: All of the great men I know, know how to listen. They don’t spout off all of their wisdom. Their wisdom lies and listening. One of my dad’s favorite things to do was to sit and listen to a conversation. He would say that by listening he left with what he knew plus what the other guy knew. He figured he won every conversation because he left with more than the other guy did. It’s simple but it’s true. (50)

About allowance: We shouldn’t give a child an allowance just because they are breathing. That’s not right. We give the allowance in return for chores that help maintain, run, and operate the home. Allowances are not a free-gifted right just because they are members of the family. Allowances are funds that will help them learn how to deal with money. (96)

Many of Croyle’s illustrations in the book fell flat for me, and I think it’s because he’s tried to cram several decades of face-to-face teaching into this book, teaching that might have used a visual illustration but doesn’t translate well into writing. That was a turnoff for me in the book, and it made it all feel quite mediocre—but then I got past the Conclusion to an interview the editor had with Croyle’s kids, both grown up and married with children now, and it all became real again for me, the reader. At one point, Brodie says:

Everything in this book is valid, but it’s not like we ever sat down and Dad said, “OK, tonight we’re going to talk about never compromising.” It was just our parents living their lives the way you’re supposed to live, leading us. You can tell somebody something until you’re blue in the face, but until they see you do it, it means nothing. We’ve seen our parents live this entire book, day in and day out consistently our whole lives. (190)

That one statement nailed the book home for me, that Croyle isn’t necessarily saying that a parent needs to figure out these steps he’s laid out, memorize and reboot them so that their kids will turn out great. Instead, his emphasis is: This isn’t a road map for raising a child as much as it is a roadmap for living as a parent. Children are watching, and they will enjoy these qualities if they see them lived out by their parents.

Overall, I felt like this book provided some nice food for thought as I raise my own two kids who are both in their pre-teens. So while I might not be at the 2-minute warning yet, I’m in like the third quarter. It’s never too early to start living like little eyes are watching, because they certainly are! This book was a good reminder of that.

©2023 E.T.

Read More Football Books:

• In the Trenches: The Autobiography by Reggie White (1997)
• The LeRoy Butler Story by LeRoy Butler and James J. Keller (2003)
• Playing for Pizza by John Grisham (2007)
• The Two-Minute Drill to Manhood by John Croyle (2013)
• Driven by Donald Driver (2013)
• Gunslinger by Jeff Pearlman (2016)